Three's the charm

County cricket's version of Twenty20 is in full swing. In its fifth year, it is pulling the crowds in again, dare I write it, against their better judgement or, to stick my head still closer to the block, because they do not have much to judge it against. That may be its greatest service, attracting the ingénues, giving them a taste for a sport that many thought of as being long-winded and complicated. They were right: it is, but to the initiated that is part of its undulating charm. To those who know cricket, the three-hour entertainment, however well suited to the age, is an awfully shallow version of the deepest game of all.

Club cricketers everywhere know Twenty20 is great fun to play and that the format's very brevity almost guarantees intensity, even on the village green. The problem is that once a side gets on top it becomes, to a tutored eye at least, boring to watch. Arguably that is true of any game of cricket but in a two-innings match there is always a chance of recovery from the most hopeless seeming of positions. It is why there is real merit in the suggestion that 50-over games might in time be shortened to 40 overs, played in two separate 20-over innings per side. I hope it is tested in county cricket, as so many other good ideas have been.

When Twenty20 is played for money, however, it is fun in the final analysis only for the winning side. Perhaps that is a jaundiced view, because, whilst I have been keeping an eye on the first four of the eight qualifying matches played by each county in their three divisions, my main focus has been on my home county, Sussex. They lost their first game off the second to last ball; their second off the last one; and their third when they had appeared likely to win, despite an inadequate-looking total batting first, only to go down heavily in the end because Abdul Razzaq, bought by Surrey solely for this competition, struck 28 off one over from the man who had been comfortably his county's most economical bowler in the first two games, one Robin Martin-Jenkins!

Jaundiced or not, my honest feeling is that other than for professional reasons I have no inclination to watch Twenty20, be it at international level, on the county circuit or in the IPL. My sad conclusion is that Twenty20 is no cricketing country for old men. Not that I consider myself old just yet. I want to have the energy to start playing cricket a bit more regularly again, because as George Bernard Shaw observed: "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

None of this is to deny the roaring commercial success of the format, nor the certainty that it has come to stay, whether anyone likes it, loves it or loathes it. From county cricket's parochial standpoint, indeed, it is the one area where the "domestic game" can actually compete on level terms with the greater attraction of the international arena, hence my recent advocacy of a programme allowing one game a week for each of the 18 clubs throughout the season. Surrey actually attracted a sell-out crowd of 23,000 to the Brit Oval to watch the Brown Caps play - and lose to - the Kent Spitfires on the very day that Lancashire had to be content with the 17,500 that they could pack into Old Trafford for England's Twenty20 fixture against New Zealand.

The ECB's mind apparently remains open on the balance it should strike between one-day and four-day cricket from 2010. Their marketing departments is setting great store by the findings of the specialist marketing research company, TNS, that is being paid an estimated £75,000 for the latest inquiries into the views of the easily pleased masses currently pouring through the gates for a taste of the razzle dazzle. Broadcasting contracts after next season cannot be delayed much longer, but the fact that the various television and radio companies have been asked to comment on no fewer than 27 possible broadcasting "bundles" of international and domestic cricket underlines the uncertainty of the current scene.

So competent is the ECB's financial management under the three main driving forces - the chief executive, David Collier; the head of finance, Brian Havill; and the chairman, Giles Clarke - that everyone seems to be prospering in English and Welsh cricket at the moment, despite the near recession that is facing the national economy. Crowds for the New Zealand Tests were good and for the four against South Africa they will no doubt be better. The 50-over one-day internationals, passé though they are deemed now to be, are being played to almost guaranteed full houses. Attendances for the first phase of County Championship games, although relatively small, continued to be considerably larger than for similar competitions elsewhere and, as already mentioned, people are flocking in for Twenty20s so far, encouraged by reasonably clement weather and energetic local marketing.

It means that the board can be courageous in what it finally proposes for the future, if only its leading lights can summon the will. For so long the domestic scene has cried out for simplification and modification. Clear minds would see the value of a county scene with three competitions not four, each designated a consistent place in the summer's calendar, so that people know what to expect from county cricket and when..

Mike Fatkin, Glamorgan's chief executive, told BBC Radio Wales this week that he would be in favour of exactly that kind of clarification. But most of the county executives seem determined to keep four different competitions. Worse, the board's master plan is still to cut the Championship to 12 games per team, thereby taking a gamble with the quality of the England Test side. Yet Test cricket had been the main contributor, through gate money and television income, to all England's cricketing wealth until the sudden advent of Sir Allen Sugar-Daddy Stanford. Everything should be aimed at maintaining the primacy of the Test match, both as the toughest, most sophisticated form of the game and as the most valuable to the players.